Julia Roberts on Young Actors in Hollywood: “There’s the Express Elevator [to Fame] and There’s Rehab”

Related: To see Roberts’s evolving style over the years—and how she developed her signature look—check out our slide show.

In Vanity Fair’s April 2012 cover story, Oscar winner and Mirror, Mirror actress Julia Roberts tells contributing editor Sam Kashner how Meryl Streep’s daughter gave her precious insight into raising kids as a famous mom. According to Roberts, her children have yet to understand what it means that their mother is a celebrity—but she talked to Grace Gummer about her own realization. “Grace comes up and goes, ‘Gosh, it’s so sweet seeing all your kids on the set. It reminds me of when I was little, and I would go see my mom at work.’ I asked, ‘Were you happy?’ Suddenly, I thought, here is a source of information,” Roberts says. “I said, ‘How old were you when you realized your mom was Meryl Streep?’ She said, ‘I think I was probably nine when I put that all together.’ I said, ‘Were you cool with it?’ She said, ‘Yeah, it was fine. There was no trauma.’ So that was hopeful.”

Roberts recalls a time “on a crowded street, and somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘Oh, that’s Julia Roberts.’ We all just kind of kept going, and then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson.’ That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”

Roberts tells Kashner that there had been “a time when I was encouraged—as all young actresses are—you know, ‘You’ve got to keep going; you’ve got to get out there.’” Unfortunately for them, Roberts says, young actors nowadays don’t have the benefit of the same kind of experience that she had when just starting out: “The business is so different; you can never be that new girl that has that moment of ‘Where’d she come from?’” she says. “There’s the express elevator and there’s rehab. It’s so awful; nobody gets a fair trial-and-error period that everybody deserves and everybody needs.”